Karnataka’s IT department will draft a policy on innovation in technology to address challenges in regulation for innovation, a government official said at a summit held in August.
The state is considering concepts like regulatory sandboxes to ensure that an adequate legal framework for innovation is available.
A regulatory sandbox refers to the live testing of new products or services in a controlled regulatory environment for which regulators may permit certain relaxations for testing.
The government aims to make the state a leading promoter of disruptive technologies by strengthening its centres of excellence in cybersecurity, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and internet of things.
According to a study, the state’s capital, Bengaluru, ranked 11th best global start-up ecosystem in 2019, up from 21st in 2017. Bengaluru has been cited as one of the fastest-growing technology hubs and start-up capitals in the world.
At the summit, the director-general of the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) said that 28 centres of excellence would be set up in STPIs across the country over the next two years to drive innovation in services and products.
A centre of excellence is a domain-specific incubation facility for start-ups in the area of emerging technologies where the highest-standards and best-practices in terms of infrastructure, tech, training, R&D, funding, and networking for the given focus area are made available.
In 2015, STPI set up an ‘Electropreneur Park’, aimed at supporting 50 start-ups working on electronics product designing and development. A year later, STPI established an incubation facility in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh to cater to the IT industry and boost entrepreneurship and exports from the state.
In August last year, STPI unveiled a new incubation centre as well as a Fab-Lab called STPI ELITE for electronics and IT start-ups in Orissa.
This year, STPI launched a centre of excellence in fintech in Chennai. The objective is to mentor and offer technical support and funding for fintech start-ups.
Also, STPI is working with the Punjab state government to develop the Start-up Punjab Hub. It will serve as a single point of contact for the entire start-up ecosystem and will provide state-of-the-art incubation facilities.
The Indian IT industry is valued at US $177 billion, with US $136 billion from exports. The industry employs about 4.1 million people.
The government plans to transform the country from an IT service industry into a product nation. The National Software Product Policy 2019 aims to capitalise on the strength of the country’s IT industry.
Currently, the global software product industry stands at US $511 billion out of which India’s share is US $8.1 billion. The objective is to take India to US $80-90 billion by 2025. Innovation would be the pivot for the country to be a US $5 trillion economy over the next 5 years, from US $3 trillion in 2020.